Last year at Travel Technology Europe the gadget everyone wanted to get their hands on was the Microsoft Surface, a furniture-sized piece of kit that, it was said, could revolutionise travel retailing.
However, 12 months on not a single one of these devices was on show on the exhibitors' stands - although the sort of touch technology it harnesses remains very much a key feature of much of what was on display.
Pic: Ergonomidesign (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)
Why? Because the meteoric rise of tablet computing, led by Apple's iPad, which is still not a year old, has changed the game completely for those innovative firms pushing at the bleeding edge of technology in travel.
The iPad app is now the must-have accessory for any aspiring travel technology firm and if you haven't got one of those you will at least be capable of demonstrating your latest developments on a 9.7-inch screen.
You won't meet a self-respecting travel technology executive these days who doesn't think that tablet computers will leave a lasting mark on the way travel products are marketed and sold in the future whether it's sofa surfers at home fed up of waiting for their lap tops to power up or customers already in destination planning that day's activities on the hoof, researching car hire deals ahead of an unscheduled day trip or looking for the best tapas in town.
What this technology has done has taken the coffee-table sized Microsoft Surface and placed it into the hands of your customers in a mobile format that takes the already familiar functionality of smartphones to the next level.
These devices are here to stay, the UK managing director of Traveltainment Andrew Nicholson assured delegates in a session in the Travolution seminar theatre at TTE on Tuesday. Traveltainment was among the firms to have wheeled out a shiny new iPad app at the show.
These personal devices are important because they dovetail nicely with another important trend being discussed, debated and demonstrated at the show, that of personalisation of the browsing experience.
Personalisation specialist LikeCube suggested 2011 could be 'the year of personalisation' saying most firms have had it on their road map for a good two years.
Director Emmanuel Marchal said: "Personalisation is in its early stages but it shows tremendous promise. This is the year for personalisation for travel companies wanting to stay ahead. You have to do it now because otherwise Google will become better than you at predicting what your customers do and do not like."
Another argument for personalisation came in a Travolution session presentation from Zolv's business development director Jonathan Greensted, who pointed out that while traffic is on the rise conversions are heading in the opposite direction.
This is putting ever greater pressure on firms to improve their conversion rates and reduce the waste of unproductive clicks and personalisation is seen as the way of achieving this.
Greensted was joined in the Travolution session by Tracey Cheffey, Yahoo!'s travel category director, who explained how it was working on personalised advertising designed to draw ever greater number of well-qualified potential customers to websites, the trick then is that those sites are optimised to convert those customers by displaying the product it already knows they are most likely to buy.
Interestingly, Greensted chose to demonstrate how not to do this by flashing up Travel Republic's website - hardly a firm that can be accused of underperforming in recent years as it rose to its pre-eminent position among the UK's top online travel agents.
But even it, Greensted argued, would find its performance enhanced by personalising the browsing experience on their website rather than setting it out as a we sell everything one-stop shop.
The race is on. As mobile internet, checking-in, liking and sharing is helping potential rivals to established travel industry players build up a gold mine of information on their customers can the industry grasp the opportunities that the data and content they already own to stay ahead of the game?
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